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BackHAUSSingapore

Pouring the Foundations

The house is built from code, in your browser, on every visit. It takes a second.

BackHAUS, a one-person games and apps studio in Singapore

Studio of One · Singapore · Since 2023

One person in Singapore, making games that teach and apps that help, with a story in there somewhere.

Come In the Back Way ↓

Room 01 · Games Room

Now Playing.

Everything in this room is out now, and I made all of it. Pull up a chair.

Room 01 · Sheet 01

Straits Mahjong

Quite possibly the most complete mahjong app on the planet.

Singapore, Hong Kong Old Style, Malaysian 3 Kaki and Japanese Riichi, each on a proper 3D table with its own course from zero, so you don't have to learn Singapore first. That's over 140 lessons, a guide that explains its thinking, and private tables for your friends, who join free, even from a browser. It even has Gwai Lou Mode, the tile-matching solitaire a lot of people think is mahjong. It isn't, but I put it in anyway.

Free to download. Singapore Mahjong and Gwai Lou Mode are free in full, and the other tables are one-time unlocks, with no subscriptions.

  • 5 Ways to Play
  • 140+ Lessons
  • 7 Tile Sets
  • English · 中文 · Melayu · தமிழ்
  • iPhone & iPad
  • Android
  • Web
Play in Your Browser (opens in a new tab)App Store (opens in a new tab)Google Play (opens in a new tab)
Gwai Lou Mode: a tile-matching solitaire board in 3D
A lesson asking which tile completes a hand of four sets and an eye
Round result: You Win, with every tai listed and every payment
The winning hand, laid out by set
Hand Summary: five tai, capped from six
The Singapore table in 3D, a tile picked and ready to discard
Choose Your Claim, with the guide suggesting Chi 3-4-5 Tong and why
  1. A Guide Who Shows Its Working
  2. Every Tai, Explained
  3. Four Rule Sets, One 3D Table
  4. Lessons for Every Table
  5. Gwai Lou Mode, Because Why Not

Have a Go · Deal Yourself a Hand

These are the app's own tiles, table and hand checker, running right here. Throw a tile away, try another tile set, or ask for a winning hand.

Room 01 · Sheet 02

Adventure Deck

Turn-by-turn directions for a cruise ship. Free, with no ads.

I sailed the Disney Adventure's maiden voyage out of Singapore and came home wanting a proper map, so I built one. All 14 decks are in 3D, every one of the 2,111 cabins has a route by lift and by stairs, and it plans your Fish Extender and Pixie Dust drops in the shortest order. There's stateroom lookup, offline guides and a Singapore guide for the days either side too. It comes in eight languages, needs no sign-up and costs nothing.

Disney, if you're reading this: hi. I'm available.

An independent guide. Not affiliated with or endorsed by Disney.

  • iPhone & iPad
  • Android
  • Web
  • Free · No Ads
  • 8 Languages
App Store (opens in a new tab)Google Play (opens in a new tab)adventuredeck.sg (opens in a new tab)
Deck 10 in 3D, with the places on it listed below
The Fish Extender tracker: rooms, deliveries and a route
My Voyage: sailing date, countdown and stateroom
19 October 2026, 3 nights from Singapore, 28 days to go
Stateroom 10512, Deck 10, Show on Map
Walking directions on the 3D deck plan, down to the aft lifts
Head to Aft Lifts, Deck 10, then down to Deck 7
  1. Countdown to Sail Day
  2. Walking Directions
  3. Fish Extender Tracker
  4. Every Deck, in 3D

Have a Go · Find Your Way

These are the app's own deck plans and router, running right here. Pick a stateroom and somewhere to go, or plan a Fish Extender run.

Room 01 · Sheet 03

Knowhere

Geography homework you'll actually want to do.

Name the countries of the world against the clock and watch a 3D globe fill in as you go. There are 198 places to find, plus flags, capitals, all 50 US states and a Daily Globe with ten new questions every day. It works offline and you don't need an account.

  • iPhone & iPad
  • Android
  • Desktop Browser
  • Free to Play
App Store (opens in a new tab)Google Play (opens in a new tab)Play in Your Browser (opens in a new tab)
Choose Your Run: Time Attack, Timeless, continents, US States, Locate and Identify
Flag match: Suriname, with the missed flag marked
The globe filling in as places are named
Capitals: Warsaw, Poland, lit up on the globe
Streak, time and question count
Warsaw, Poland: a new connection for next time
Four capitals to choose from, one right, one wrong
  1. Against the Clock
  2. Four Cities, One Capital
  3. 198 Places to Find
  4. Flags
  5. Pick a Run

Have a Go · Name a Country

This is Knowhere's own globe, running right here. Type a country and it lights up the way it does in the game.

Room 02 · Music Room

Sognata

Real Instruments, Real Sheet Music

Every work starts as a written score, and recordings of real musicians play it. None of it is generated.

Orchestral music from real sheet music, played by real recorded instruments.

Visit sognata.com (opens in a new tab)Sognata is in private preview.

Before the Concert

Tune Up

The oboe gives the A, the strings tune in fifths, everyone practises at once, and then the whole orchestra settles on one note. It's written as a score like everything here, so you can switch each section on and off while it plays.

0:00 / 0:34
Picture
Theme

  1. Not Generated

    Sognata isn't an AI music generator, and nobody types a prompt to get a song. Each work is written as a score first, part by part, and that score is what you hear.

  2. Every Note on Screen

    The films are drawn from the score as it plays. In the Round turns a piece into a turning disc, and Keyfall drops each note onto a keyboard as it sounds.

  3. Recorded Instruments

    The orchestra is made of recordings of real musicians playing real instruments. Each part plays its own line of the score, with the articulation that line asks for, such as legato or pizzicato.

  4. One Studio

    Sognata does the work of a DAW and a sample player in one. It reads the score, plays each instrument's recordings, then mixes and masters the result.

What It's For

  • Game Music

    BackHAUS writes the music for its games with Sognata.

  • Testing a Score

    Musicians use it to test the scores they compose, with every part played by recorded instruments.

The Name

Sognata is Italian for "dreamed", and it sits one letter away from sonata. A piece starts as music someone hears in their head. Sognata carries it from there to a written score, a performance and a film.

A BackHAUS project

Room 03 · Workshop

Want One of These?

I build apps, games and websites for other people too, from the first sketch to the store listing, and I stick around after launch. If your company's IT is a tangle, I can help with that as well.

There are no account managers and no hand-offs. You talk to the person writing the code, who is also the person answering your email. I'm based in Singapore and happy to work with anyone.

Start a Project Everything I Do

Planning an event instead? Registration, check-in and the kit on the day are next door at FrontHAUS.

Schedule of Works

  1. 01AppsiPhone, iPad and Android, from the first sketch to the store listing.
  2. 02Websites & Web AppsQuick, accessible and built to last longer than the trend it was designed in.
  3. 03Games & 3D on the WebLike the house you just walked through. It was made the same way.
  4. 04WordPress & WooCommercePlugins, rescues, speed-ups and the odd miracle.
  5. 05IT ConsultingStraight answers on systems, security and what to buy, and what not to.

How It Goes

  1. 1Tell MeWhat it is, who it’s for, and what keeps you up at night.
  2. 2Draw It UpA plan you can read and a price before anything is built.
  3. 3Build ItYou try it on your own phone as it grows, not at the end.
  4. 4Ship ItI handle the stores, hosting and launch day, then stay on call.

Past Commissions

Pinned to the Board

  • SCDF · National Service

    Blue Force Tracking

    Every friendly unit across the SCDF, police and armed forces on one live map. I built it in-house as a stopgap for a National Day Parade, when the vendor route was too slow and too expensive. It went on to run at later parades, the ASEAN Summit and the Trump-Kim Summit.

    The one I still bring up at dinner.

  • With FrontHAUS

    Event Platforms

    EventHAUS for MHA, EDB and the People's Association; full builds for Sentosa's Zentosa Fest and Food Fest and the Marina Bay Countdown site; and a virtual event platform that OCBC Bank and International SOS used during COVID-19.

    More on FrontHAUS

  • BackHAUS

    Community Systems

    Internal and public-facing systems for community and social service organisations in Singapore, including tools that look after sensitive personal data.

  • BackHAUS

    One Support Portal

    A single front door to every support channel a company has, so customers stop getting bounced between them.

  • For Microsoft

    SG Radio

    A Windows 8 launch app for Singapore, built under contract. It led to a job offer, and my apps went on to pass 2.4 million downloads.

  • BackHAUS

    This Website

    The house you came in through is built in code, down to the mahjong tiles on the table. So are the drawings in the Games Room.

Room 04 · Plugin Shed

WordPress, Still.

Before the games there was WordPress, and I never quite moved out. Two tools live in the shed: an email plugin for WooCommerce stores, and a free script for putting hacked sites back together.

Free and Pro · v1.5

BackHAUSEmail Campaigns

WooCommerce Plugin

The easy way to email all your WooCommerce customers: pick who gets it, write it, send it, all inside WordPress and in your store's own email template. The free edition does that much. Pro adds automatic emails, series, back-in-stock alerts and subject tests, with no monthly platform fee.

Free, or Pro from$49a year

See the Plugin Try the Merge Tags
Free · MIT · v2.0

WP-Narcan

Hack Recovery Script

A free Python script for rebuilding a hacked WordPress site. It fetches clean, verified core, plugins and themes into a fresh folder, takes anything that could run out of the uploads, and sets aside whatever it can't check.

wpnarcan.py
$ wpnarcan /var/www/example.comWP-Narcan 2.0.0 (Hopscotch)Site       /var/www/example.comWordPress  7.0.6, en_US, single siteOutput     /var/www/example.com-rebuiltReport     /var/www/example.com-rebuilt-reportWP-Narcan only reads /var/www/example.com.Write the rebuild and report to the places above? [y/N] yWordPress core  Downloading WordPress 7.1.2 (en_US)  Verified the download's SHA-1 and 3,782 file checksums  Old core files (checked against WordPress 7.0.6): 1 modified    modified    wp-includes/functions.php
How It Works Scan a wp-config.php

Room 05 · Repair Shop

Hacked? White Screen? Deep Breaths.

I clean up hacked WordPress sites, bring crashed ones back and lock them down so it doesn't happen again. You deal with me directly, not a ticket queue.

Get Help See Services
  1. 01Malware Cleanup
  2. 02Site Recovery
  3. 03Security Hardening

Room 06 · Upstairs

Under the Dust Sheets

More games are on the bench up here. I can't show you yet, but they're coming, and sooner than you'd think.

  • No. 4
  • No. 5
  • No. 6

On the Doorbell

Who Lives Here?

Jason Chee. Just me.

I've been shipping apps since 2012, with stops at Microsoft, the SCDF and NUS along the way. BackHAUS is where I make the things I wish existed. Usually that's a game that sneaks some learning in, or an app that makes a day out go better, and ideally there's a story in it.

Why BackHAUS?

In 2021 I co-founded FrontHAUS, an events technology company. When I set up a company of my own for everything else, my corporate registrar joked that it should be called BackHAUS. I went with it. It also sounds a bit like Bauhaus, which I now pretend was the plan all along.

Staff
1
Based In
Singapore
Shipping Since
2012
Out Now
3

Revisions

  1. A2012

    Started RoC Apps and shipped my first apps. They went on to pass 2.4 million downloads, including SG Radio, a Windows 8 launch app for Singapore.

  2. B2014

    Joined Microsoft Singapore as a Technical Evangelist, later Audience Marketing Manager. Named Microsoft Student Partner of the Year 2015, out of more than 9,000 worldwide.

  3. C2016

    National Service at the SCDF as an IT Project Officer. Built a live map of every friendly unit in-house, and it ran at National Day Parades, the ASEAN Summit and the Trump-Kim Summit.

  4. D2018

    Computer Science at NUS on an IMDA National Infocomm Scholarship, focused on computer security, with a minor in Communications and New Media.

  5. E2021

    Co-founded FrontHAUS, an events technology company. Its platform, EventHAUS, runs ticketing, seat maps, check-in and virtual queues for clients including MHA, EDB and the People's Association.

  6. F2023

    Set up BackHAUS Pte. Ltd. for everything else. You're standing in it.

Certified & Tested

Front Door

That's the Tour.

You came in the back. Leave by the front, and say hello on the way out.

Model 01 · Front Elevation · After Hours

Keep walking and you'll reach FrontHAUS, the events tech company I co-founded, next door. It's why this one is called BackHAUS.